Think New York City holiday windows and visions of sugarplums will dance in your head? Not so at Barneys New York, where the luxury retailer has made a tradition of, well, ditching the traditional. Past installations have included a Baz Luhrmann collaboration with live performers; a literal, ever-growing ice castle; and a virtual sleigh ride. This year, however, the luxury retailer has really outdone itself. How? With the help of Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and the characters from their riotously inappropriate TV show, South Park. Yes, Cartman, Kyle, and Kenny are hanging out on Madison Avenue beside the store’s other windows by Rob Pruitt, Nick Cave, and Studio Job. If this seems quite unexpected, the script the characters say is even more so. No, it’s not graphic or politically incorrect, but it does include the phrase “clothes suck.” As a card-carrying “fashion person,” I couldn’t help but laugh.

Barneys is laughing too—or at least, trying to brighten your spirits. The theme for the store’s six windows this year (two downtown, four uptown) is Love, Peace, Joy, which was interpreted by artists including the South Park duo, Pruitt, Cave, the pair behind Studio Job, and Ebony G. Patterson, who occupies the downtown space. “We knew it could be a difficult year ahead. The idea of Love, Peace, Joy came out of that,” explained Barneys creative director Dennis Freedman, who chose the artists for their ability to subvert expectations of what could be a hippie-dippie theme.

Freedman wanted to move beyond solely working with fine artists or fashion folk, which is how the South Park creators came into the conversation. “The idea of working with South Park was ideal for us. It was our number one choice to kind of bridge to television and entertainment . . . the idea of collaborating with this subversive and brilliant, iconic television show really appealed to us. It was almost the perfect match. The only problem was, we thought they’d never do it,” said Freedman.

Let’s just say, it didn’t take much convincing. “This is the first thing like this that anyone has asked us to do. Because I’m such a fan of holiday windows and dioramas it immediately made sense to me. And Barneys New York is in our neighborhood; we shop there all the time,” said Parker in a statement. “It’s really fun for me; we have our tradition of walking around New York and looking in holiday windows, and it will be fun that one of them is mine.”

Together Barneys and South Park rendered the kids of South Park in 3-D and wrote a punchy script for them to say with the help of projections by the company Christie. “It is the contrast between all the windows that I think make it something that people will enjoy. You literally walk from one world to the other. We’ve never done that,” said Freedman.

For all the levity, there is an important message beneath the jokes. “I think the key word is inclusivity. The idea of the fact that we’re embracing many different ways of living, different cultures, every unique individual. That is a very important part of who we are and it’s something that we will always, hopefully, continue,” said Freedman. “We believe in the goodness of people, and that is something that is very important to our identity.”